Dorset

Dorset is a county of great beauty and interest, which retains its unity and individuality. It boasts some of England’s classic landscapes with rolling chalk downland and hidden valleys. Here you will find villages full of thatched cottages. They have the simple characteristics of a community which has grown up around the church, manor house, vicarage, farms and the village pub and green. The villages are far enough apart to have different characters and appearance, but they are all unmistakably Dorset. The local mellow Purbeck stone is distinctive in the Eastern Dorset villages such as Corfe and Worth Matravers. The Cerne Giant cut into the chalk at Cerne Abbas, is of immense antiquity and interest.

For those who have read any of Thomas Hardy’s work, Dorset is inextricably interwoven with memories of his novels and poems and the atmosphere they create. Hardy adopted the historical name of Wessex, once the kingdom of King Alfred, as the name for his own ‘partly real, partly dream-country’. The great majority of locations in Hardy’s novels are set within West Dorset. These include, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Under the Greenwood Tree, Far from the Madding Crowd, The Mayor of Casterbridge, The Woodlanders and The Return of the Native.

Dorset has a beautiful coastline. Bournemouth is a cosmopolitan seaside resort with six miles of clean, sandy beaches. Poole has a magnificent natural harbour, believed to be the second largest in the world, after Sydney Harbour. Across the Harbour, are the spectacular sights of the chalk stacks of Old Harry Rocks, followed along the coast by Lulworth Cove and the chalk arch of Durdle Door.

The Dorset coast offers splendid walking opportunities. The highest cliff in Southern England is at Golden Cap, where there are breathtaking views along the coast to the Isle of Portland (Hardy’s ‘Isle of Slingers’) and the dramatic Chesil Beach.

Weymouth has a glorious setting, occupying the low lying coastal plain below the ancient trackway known as the Ridgeway, which crosses the top of the chalk hills from White Horse Hill in the east, to Abbotsbury...

Stinsford, is a small hamlet set in a wooded valley of the River Frome. It is a place of pilgrimage for visitors from all over the world who enjoy the works of the internationally renowned novelist and poet, T...

This ancient and cobbled steeply descending street, is probably the most photographed in Dorset. Its unique setting in the County's only hill-top town, was made even more famous as the setting for the Hovi...

Melbury Osmond is approached along a winding, sunken lane, with thatched stone cottages lining the slopes. This crosses the watersplash, a shallow paved ford crossed by a small footbridge. In spring and summer,...

Bournemouth in Dorset, is a cosmopolitan seaside resort on the south coast of England. It has many enormous natural advantages and attracts over five million visitors every year, not only in the summer months, ...

The South West Coast Path in this part of Dorset, attracts many visitors. Walkers generally leave their cars at Lulworth Cove, or the Durdle Door Holiday Park. The views here of the Jurassic Coast are spectacul...

The South West Coast Path is considered to be one of the world's greatest walks. It includes all of the 95 miles of the Jurassic Coast, declared a World Heritage Site in 2001. It is the only place in the world ...